IR blaster. I could control just about anything in my house with my old Galaxy S6. Made it so convenient to have a universal remote built into the phone. Especially when you end up in a hotel or at a friend’s house and can’t find a remote.
Oh, my HTC One M8 had that. Really miss it for the IR Blaster and the air pressure sensor. You always had a really good weather station in your pocket.
I used to love having one of these while I was in college. I would use it whenever I went into the cafeteria for lunch and they had Cartoon Network on on the TV and Teen Titans NO was on. Yes, I know what I did. It is the only appropriate title for that steaming pile of radioactive waste.
It was also fun to mess with other public TVs when they thought that nobody would have the ability to change the channel.
If you are looking for something to set up at home then you can buy one of those hockey puck looking things. They connect to Wi-Fi and you can teach them a set of IR commands that they can repeat.
In the gaming sector, nothing has adequately replicated the stylus used by the DS, 3DS, and Wii U. It was the best way to play a few signature games like Elite Beat Agents (now incarnated as Osu) and Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Touchscreens are just a bit too universal and resilient for us to go back to them.
To be precise Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan was the original Japanese game, Elite Beat Agents was the English-language localization adaptation mutation, and osu! is the fan-made knockoff of both.
I honestly would if I could. A few times I’ve started the car and gotten a “handbrake error” which has left me stranded until the Google told me I need to take the key out of the ignition, lock the doors and wait for the car to go into low power mode then try again. Fuck automatic handbrakes.
Apart from that the car is pretty great though. Uses almost no fuel and has lasted forever, touch wood. 15 years old now and going strong.
Oh sorry, the oil filter is buried in the middle of the engine and the battery was an absolute nightmare to replace because it was also buried. Two things that should be easy peasy to sort out yourself.
But apart from that it’s been a great car. Honestly. :D
Most traffic preemption devices intended for emergency traffic redirection use optical technology to beam infrared light from vehicles to static receivers mounted on traffic light poles.
Essentially, the tech works by detecting a specific pattern of infrared light emitted by the Mobile Infrared Transmitter (MIRT) installed in a police car, fire truck, or ambulance when the MIRT is switched on. When the receiver detects the light, the traffic system then initiates a signal change as the emergency vehicle approaches an intersection, safely redirecting the traffic flow so that the emergency vehicle can pass through the intersection as if it were regular traffic and potentially avoid a collision.
Good keyboards on computers. At the office, everything are those extremely uncomfortable $5 dell keyboards. At a climbing gym or pool, the liability iPads that you sign forms on is using those really uncomfortable apple keyboards too.
I miss the better keyboards that we had back 25 years ago. Modern box jades bring some of that back for your own PC.
Excuse me, the IBM model M was made from 85-96, there was then a 10 year gap until the Das Mechanical came out in 06 but the Model M was 100% widely available used during that time and Cherry AG stayed in business so there were still modders and small companies making Model M type keyboards even then.
But… you could just buy a good keyboard? With a bit larger budget than that 5$ a lot of modern mechanical keyboards could just as well be pure gold, they are so good. I’m still chugging on my 65$ CM Storm Quickfire XT from 8-10 years ago. This is problem of knowledge/motivation , not a problem of supply/scarcity
You can get nice mechanical keyboards these days. They’re not cheap though
Back in 2004 the company we worked at (we worked for another company who provided tech contract work for them) was bought and they were dismantling a particular site. I remember getting to the e-trash dumpster and finding boxes of almost new computers and HP keyboards. I had a truck so I grabbed them all. The computers, I donated. The keyboards I still have maybe 3 or 4, after having given others to friends and family.
Was really nice to be able to throw your phone on when you didn’t have access to a device with Bluetooth. At an Airbnb, in an older car, on the beach with a portable radio, etc.
One big technical reason for this was actually the file system. Back when phones came with various types of sd-card support, they only had a few gigs of storage. fat32 was enough and was supported everywhere. But fat32 had some file system limitations and when sd-card sizes grew over 4gb there were comparability issues since windows was limited to fat32 and ntfs. I can imagine the support hell when a user couldn’t mount the sd card containing photos on his or her computer.
The solution to that was ExFAT, which is another patented MS system, so requires a license fee (I think) but otherwise is compatible with anything (because they all had to pay the fee…) But specifically compatible with Windows out of the box.
I’m sad that popup front cameras didn’t catch on. I only remember 2 or 3 phones that had them. For me it’s the perfect compromise - this way you can make an end to end screen without the need for a notch, and since I very rarely use the front camera, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the durability of the popup mechanism. The only real downside I see is that it complicates waterproofing.
I mean the latest crop of phones aren’t that far off, we’ve got fingerprint sensors behind screens already and the front facing camera on my Pixel 7 is a pinhole at the top of the screen less than a centimetre across—which IMO just blends in.
Notification light built into the trackball with customizable colors depending on the app
Back plate came off, replaceable battery
Small and a one handed wonder, the trackball kept my fingers off the screen
It was a replacement for my jail broken iPhone OG, such a better interface for me than the iPhones and it had very basic multitasking when the other guys could only do one app at a time
For real, you sold me on that trackball. That sounds like the coolest feature a phone could have, right down to the multi-color led built in beneath it. I really really hope we see a return to something like that! Touch screens are very useful and have their place but physical buttons/controls are usually preferred when done properly. Here’s a pic of the Nexus 1, that trackball indeed appears to be cool as fuck:
Oh hey, it’s my 2nd smartphone ever. How nostalgic! This phone was built like an absolute tank. It really was a great little phone.
That said, the problem with physical controls is that you either need a larger device or smaller screen to accommodate them. For most people, the tradeoff just isn’t worth it.
For a while, I bemoaned the loss of the physical button bar. Having four (!) indicator lights was really useful to boot. Now I happily use gestures with no looking back.
Would be nice to still see some phones offer this for those who want them, though.
I loved my Nexus One, definitely one of my favorite phones ever. I too got one after being tired of Apple’s iOS restrictions and the “you’re holding it wrong” scandal with the iPhone 4.
I still have it in storage and take it out every one in a while. It surprising how small it is and hard to believe that cell phones used to fit in the palm of your hand.
I thought the digital trackball of the HTC Incredible was cool as shit. It was my favorite phone and I would still be using it today (not as a phone) if it didn’t have a restart bug that HTC refused to acknowledge.
My 1st phones were around €200, now you only find cheap junk that breaks within a year at that prize point. Having to cough up €500-700 for a phone that lasts a few years sounds excessive. Best phone until now is my '18 Nokia 6.1. Prize was €300 and it’s still going strong.
FM receiver on phones + 3.5mn jack was a crucial source of local radio transmissions. I suspect some phones still ship radio receivers but the popular types like Samsungs and iPhones don’t seem to care (or perhaps that competes with their music and podcast markets).
Here in Italy since 2020 it’s not legal to sell a device that has an FM receiver if that device doesn’t also have a DAB/DAB+ receiver, so many companies have been shipping software updates that disabled the FM receiver app even if they were compliant on older phones. Kinda sucks.
That sucks! As long as a device can decode the signals, I don’t see why they should phase it out just to be compatible with DAB+ (especially when infrastructural costs are not a major factor).
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